The illusions of a celebrated recovery

A month-long upturn in the stock market has sparked a round of optimistic media commentaries and statements by Obama administration officials suggesting that the US economy is on the road to recovery. But any serious examination of the state of both the financial system and the broader economy suggests that such celebrations are unwarranted.

• Factory orders have fallen so rapidly that US manufacturers are using less than 68 percent of capacity, the lowest level since records began in 1948.
• March saw 35 corporations default on bond payments, the largest monthly total since the Great Depression, according to Moody’s. The default rate has shot up from 1.5 percent a year ago to 7 percent, and will reach 14.6 percent by the fourth quarter, the rating service said.
• Bloomberg News forecasted that corporate profits for the first quarter will fall 37 percent, the seventh consecutive quarterly decline, the worst since the 1930s.
• As measured by the market for credit default swaps, investors have been making large bets that Citigroup and Bank America will collapse. Similar bets were seen before the liquidation of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers last year.
• World trade is shrinking more rapidly than during the plunge of 1929-30 according to a paper published this week by economists Barry Eichengreen of the University of California and Kevin O’Rourke of Ireland’s Trinity College.
The deepening crisis is demonstrated above all in its effects on jobs and living standards for the working class:
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 24 million workers, 15.6 percent of the labor force, are either unemployed or working only part-time when they want full-time work. This is an increase of 10 million workers in barely a year.
• Forty percent of US companies said they plan to freeze or cut salaries this year, according to a survey reported by Reuters April 7.
• Companies have cut back in five employee benefit areas, including 401(k) matches and tuition reimbursement, according to a report in USA Today.
• The average 401(k) account plunged in value by 27 percent in 2008, according to the huge Fidelity Investments mutual fund.
• Personal bankruptcy filings are up 38 percent compared with a year earlier, according to Mike Bickford, president of Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, a bankruptcy data and management company. In all, 130,793 people filed for bankruptcy in March.